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Idr
Idr is the culmination of my many innovations when creating new conlangs. It combines successful features of my past conlangs, including the simple root system, pioneered by Dàngak, with its triconsonantal root system, and later enhanced by Adw, which used short, inseparable consonantal stems. Idr takes Adw a step further by eliminating the need for 10 vowels and using the "Standard 5" vowels /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/. Another enhancement of Idr is the lack of consonants - there are only 16, for a total of 21 phonemes in all. And finally, my use of RPN-like logic and grammar to create an unambiguous grammar, first pioneered in Dvê. And unlike many of my other languages, Idr is the first one designed from the get-go to be an auxlang. Idr can be said to have three goals: be logical, have a small amount of short stems, and have few phonemes. Idr is, to date, my conlang which best satisfies the three in a synergistic manner. Grammar Dvê-class grammar has its origins in Lojban. Originally, my thoughts were that a VSO language would be most logical, as it is the "grammar" of many programming languages. However, my thoughts quickly changed after experimenting with an RPN-like SOV language. Having a mental "stack" seems to be easier to compute than remembering all of the previously stated verbs, although it is quite possible to speak either, as is evidenced by natlangs like Irish, and, conversely, Latin. Word Order So what does this mean, for the speaker? Well, it's actually pretty similar to Lojban, but judge for yourself: Lojban - x1 V x2 ... xn Dvê - x1 V1 OR x1 x2 V2 The most immediate difference is that the verb is no longer in the center of the sentence. However, the most *important* differences to note are that the verb is marked for having either one or two arguments, and that the verb can only have one or two arguments. One of the immediate questions you should think to yourself should be "But how would you account for verbs like 'give', which have three arguments?!". And that is a very good question, and one which lead me to my second breakthrough, which allowed me to have caseless nouns. For the following example, I use English words with a Dvê-style grammar to demonstrate how this is accomplished: I puppy give John to. ((I,puppy)give,John)to "I give John a puppy." Simple enough. This can be expanded further to other constructions. Monoargumental and Diargumental Roots In the previous section, we discussed how we can have verbs with either one or two arguments. Well, the monoargumentals are verbs with one argument are like the intransitive verbs or adjectives of most natlangs, and the diargumentals are those with two arguments and are like the transitive verbs or prepositions or conjunctions of most natlangs. In practice, to mark the verbs, you apply one of these vowel clusters to the VToW slot of the word: * (a) monoargumental present verb (can be omitted if you can pronounce the word without) * au monoargumental nonpresent verb * e diargumental present verb * eu diargumental nonpresent verb The present-nonpresent distinction is quite like natlangs. Present tense verbs are real things happening now, and nonpresent verbs are those which have, will, or may happen. Morphology VToW-Stem1-(V2-Stem2)-...-(Vn-Stemn) Pretty self-explanatory one I list what each of these mean, so here I go: * VToW - "Type-of-word" Vowel. I listed the verbal possibilities, but the nominal possibilities will be discussed later in the chapter. * Stem1 - Main stem. * V2 and Vn- Usually "a" which is the default, however can be these: ** a - default ** e - -er (ie. eo. -ant-) ** i - unassigned ** o - unassigned ** u - derived material, eg. "wool" from "sheep", but NOT "mutton", which'd use the -meat suffix * Stem2 and Stemn - more stems, for compounds. "Later in the Chapter" * i singular noun * o plural noun (a bunch of like stems) * u plural noun (a bunch of differing stems) * oi a group of the stem which contextually acts as one entity * ui combo of u and oi * ai something like the stem, eg "a cat-like entity" from cat Okay, explanation time. i'' is simple enough. ''o and u'' are inspired by the Discrete and Aggregative of Ithkuil. I personally thought that the grammatical numbers of Ithkuil were a particular stroke of genius, and I truly believe that this innovation dwarfs all of Ithkuil's other features, except perhaps the stem derivation, which is pretty fucking rad too. Likewise, the ''oi and ui are like the Segmentative/Coherent and Componential/Composite. I personally do not find the distinction between the two particularly important, and so have collapsed the four forms into two. Lastly, ai, is pretty much identical to the Multiform. You can find out about these shamelessly stolen features and more at J.Q.'s site. If you have particular difficulty understanding the insane ramblings of a clown ingenious description on his site, you're not alone, friend. Just consider the o and u similar for now, the oi and ui to be like the -ar- of Esperanto, and the ai to be like the -ec(aĵ)- or -um- of Esperanto. Proper Nouns Proper nouns, eg. "John" are just a bare VToW followed by the transliterated word. In this example, i dsan. Suffixes and such are added to the bare VToW. If the foreign word is two words, combine it into one. Dictionary There are currently 96 stems, but more will be added (likely 20 more). To see a list of the different words and their derivatives, please see The Category:idr at the bottom of this page. Category:Idr